The White House Watches Egypt

“The world is watching what is happening in Cairo,” the White House said in a statement midday on Wednesday. It is, indeed, hard to turn away from the scenes of killing in the city’s squares, where this morning Egypt’s security forces broke up sit-ins, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, protesting the military coup that removed Mohamed Morsi from power in July. According to reports from the scene, the shooting began quickly. The first, likely incomplete, count from Egypt’s Ministry of Health was close to two hundred and thirty-five dead and over two thousand injured—numbers that will likely be fought over and examined. But who is looking to the White House on this one, and to whom is it even speaking?

From Cairo, there were pictures of bodies crowding makeshift morgues and people carrying the wounded in a panic out of the squares. As in an earlier assault on protesters, there were reports of sniper wounds. “At least one protester was burned alive in his tent,” the Times reported. “Some of the dead appeared to be in their early teens, and young women assisting in a field hospital had stains in the hems of their abayas from the pools of blood covering the floor.”

“We extend our condolences to the families of those who have been killed, and to the injured,” the White House statement said. “We have repeatedly called on the Egyptian military and security forces to show restraint, and for the government to respect the universal rights of its citizens, just as we have urged protesters to demonstrate peacefully.” And now that this has not happened? “We urge the government of Egypt—and all parties in Egypt—to refrain from violence and resolve their differences peacefully.”

“I am convinced that that path is still open,” Secretary of State John Kerry said in a follow-up statement, speaking of the prospect that something peaceable could be salvaged. “The United States strongly condemns today’s violence and bloodshed across Egypt,” he said, calling it “deplorable.” He said that the revolution’s legacy hadn’t been written yet—that not all of the idealism of Egypt’s uprising had been bulldozed along with the tents in Raba’a Square—but that it would be over the next hours and days. “The United States remains at the ready to work with all parties,” Kerry said. He added that “Egyptians inside and outside of the government need to take a step back. They need to calm the situation and avoid further loss of life.” The mood in Egypt is such that each party, hearing those words, is likely to feel simultaneously exempt and maligned.

A hard question here is where the Brotherhood is meant to step back to, other than out of politics entirely. One of many problems is that those who back Mohammed Morsi, the deposed President, who is being held incommunicado (and who undoubtedly mismanaged his time in office), have been effectively shut out of their own domestic dialogue. The military put in place a state of emergency and, as of 9 P.M. local time, a curfew. It arrested several of the Brotherhood leaders not already in detention. The state of emergency means that it won’t have to explain why.

One person who seems open to conversation is Mohamed ElBaradei, who received a Nobel Prize for his work with the International Atomic Energy Agency. He had joined the government as Vice-President after the coup; it was one of the moves that people pointed to when they argued that this was a novel kind of military coup, hardly a coup at all. (Naunihal Singh lays out the historical problems with that assessment.) He resigned this morning, saying that the military had refused to listen to him:

As you are aware, I always saw peaceful alternatives for resolving this societal wrangling, certain solutions were proposed, which could have led to the national conciliation, but things have come this far…. It has become difficult for me to continue bearing the responsibility for decisions to which I do not agree, and I fear their consequences.

ElBaradei concluded, “Regretfully, what happened today is only in the interest of advocates of violence, terrorism, and extremist groups; and those words of mine will be recalled one day.” There is good reason to fear that he is right, as Steve Coll has written, in terms of an increase in terror. It took a long time to persuade the Muslim Brotherhood that elections were an alternative to violence. The coup unravelled that progress; Raba’a may have ended it. One of the dead is reportedly Asmaa el-Beltagy, the seventeen-year-old daughter of Mohamed el-Beltagy, one of the group’s senior leaders.

The disaster in Cairo began when the leaders of what the White House has avoided calling a military coup decided that the protesters, who had set up tents and banners with Morsi’s picture, simply couldn’t stay there any more, and that it was unwilling to wait them out or exert slower pressure. Policemen were followed by soldiers, according to press reports. At times, there seems to have been a general melee, accompanied by reports of church burnings. Every side blames the United States for something—talking to Morsi, abandoning Morsi, being too involved or abdicating. But the Egyptian military is the one most responsible for staging a battle on the streets of Cairo today. It is also the one funded, in part, by a billion dollars in American aid every year. Does that money get us a hearing? And does Obama even know what, specifically, he would ask for?

Photograph: Ahmed Gomaa/AP

Amy Davidson is a New Yorker staff writer. She is a regular Comment contributor for the magazine and writes a Web column, in which she covers war, sports, and everything in between.